Other forms: raped, rapping, raping, raps, rapped
To rap is to knock sharply and quickly. Rap on the door, rap the table, a rap at the window.
The sound is what the word is for — short, hard and repeated. It also means to criticise sharply: rapped for the delay, a rap on the knuckles, which is a mild public rebuke. In music, rap is the spoken rhythmic style at the centre of hip hop, and to rap is to perform it. Note take the rap, meaning to accept blame for something, often somebody else's, and rap sheet, an American term for a criminal record.
1verbrapTo knock sharply and quickly.
“Somebody rapped on the window and was gone.”
2nounstyleA style of rhythmic spoken music.
“My son listens to rap and writes his own lyrics.”
3nounblameBlame or a sharp rebuke.
“He took the rap for all three of them.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
rap is a sharp knock, or a music style.
Middle English rap is imitative — the word simply sounds like the knock. The musical sense came from Black American English in the 1960s, where rap had long meant to talk, and the two senses are almost certainly the same word.
Middle English
rap
English, today
rap
From Middle English rap, rappe, of gmq origin, related to Norwegian rapp (“a blow, strike, lash”), Swedish rapp (“a blow, lash, crack”), Danish rap (“a tap, smart, blow”). Compare Old English hreppan (“to touch, treat”). More at rape.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA